Dutch authorities say 13 young Muslims arrested on terrorism charges in the Netherlands following the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh are members of a radical Islamic group with international links and a Syrian-born spiritual leader.
Dutch intelligence calls the group the "Hofstad Netwerk," and a Justice Ministry official says 43-year-old Syrian Redouan al-Issar, the alleged spiritual leader, has disappeared without a trace.
Van Gogh was ritually slaughtered on an Amsterdam street Nov. 2, apparently for criticizing Islam. His killing set off a wave of reprisals -- attacks on more than 20 Islamic sites in the Netherlands, including a mosque gutted by fire early Saturday.
Van Gogh's alleged killer, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, of Amsterdam, was arrested in a shootout with police minutes after the filmmaker died of gunshot wounds and a slit throat. Bouyeri had a will in his pocket saying he was prepared to die for Islamic jihad, or holy war.
In the days that followed, the government has come under pressure to release details about Islamic radicals and terrorist recruiting in the Netherlands.
In a letter and notes sent to parliament Thursday, Interior Minister Johan Remkes, who oversees the secret service, gave the clearest picture yet of the Dutch cell allegedly behind Van Gogh's murder.
Remkes said the Hofstad Network, composed mostly of young Dutch Muslims of North African ancestry, has links to networks in Spain and Belgium; that several members of the group have traveled to Pakistan for training; and that its members were under the influence of al-Issar for many years.
"The number of persons and networks in the Netherlands that thinks and acts in terms of actual violence is, in our opinion, limited," he wrote. "But the feeding ground from which they spring is broader ... it's better to think in terms of thousands than hundreds," he said.
Al-Issar went by several names, including "Abu Kaled," the Justice Ministry official said. The same name is used by al-Qaeda fugitive Muhammad Bahaiah, a courier between Osama bin Laden and European cells.
Al-Issar had sought asylum in Germany beginning in 1995, but has not been seen there since May last year, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Remkes said the Dutch secret service realized in the spring of last year that al-Issar was "a leading figure" who preached at fundamentalist gatherings at Bouyeri's Amsterdam home.
Al-Issar "radiates charisma and exercises great influence on youth from this network," Remkes wrote. "Participants strengthened their radical Islamic ideas, and the subject of violent jihad is often discussed."
Dick Leurdijk, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism at the Netherlands Institute of Foreign Relations Clingendael, said he had worried there would be an attack like the one that killed Van Gogh.
"We cannot exclude these things happening in the Netherlands," he said. "We are certainly part of [the target of] this jihad.''
Leurdijk said the Dutch cell has special links to Islamic groups in Spain, as well as a "common ideology" with al-Qaeda.
Three Dutch members of the Hofstad group traveled to Portugal in June during the European soccer championship and were arrested and deported because authorities there feared they would carry out an attack, Remkes said in the letter.
The Dutch secret service has been shadowing as many as 200 potential terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, but Bouyeri wasn't among them.
The Dutch cell began showing "conspiratorial behavior" last year and a number of members traveled to Pakistan, probably for training, Remkes said.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
RSS